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Officers Acquitted in Mineo Trial

Officer Richard Kern, center, hearing that he was acquitted of all charges on Monday.Credit
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

A Brooklyn jury found three police officers not guilty on Monday of abusing a suspect in the Prospect Park subway station during a 2008 arrest, in a case that recalled some of the city’s most notorious police brutality episodes but never generated as much public outcry or departmental change.

Acquitting all three men on all counts, the jurors rejected Michael Mineo’s claims that Officer Richard Kern had attacked him and repeatedly rammed a baton between his buttocks, thereby making the charges against the two other officers — that they had helped cover up the abuse — irrelevant.

“I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep,” Officer Kern said after the verdict was read. “I’m glad the system works. It’s been a long road and it’s finally over, thank God.”

The verdict, by a jury of six men and six women, came after just one full day of deliberations in a trial that lasted four weeks. One juror, Stevan L. Miller, said in an interview that the prosecution’s case had “so many holes” that he and other jurors were shocked when they finished. “The defense didn’t have to do anything,” Mr. Miller said.

“It’s not over,” Mr. Mineo said. “I kind of had a feeling it would turn out this way. If you want to commit a murder, join the N.Y.P.D. and you get cleaned off.”

On Oct. 15, 2008, Officer Kern, assigned to a unit working from Brooklyn’s 71st Precinct, saw Mr. Mineo, a body-piercer, smoking marijuana on Flatbush Avenue and then chased him into the subway station. After a struggle, Mr. Mineo was handcuffed outside the station manager’s booth, then released with a summons despite a computer check that should have shown that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

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Michael Mineo, moments after hearing the verdicts at State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Monday. He filed a civil suit against New York City in May.Credit
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Officer Kern, 26, a married father of three, has been on the force five years. The other officers on trial were Officer Kern’s partner, Andrew Morales, 28, the son and brother of New York detectives; and Alex Cruz, 28, who looked toward the floor and cried as the verdict was read.

“It was very hard sitting there and listening to all the lies,” Officer Morales said afterward.

Officer Kern, whose confident, matter-of-fact testimony was a key part of the defense case, showed no expression before the verdict was read, then smiled, hugging his lawyer and his parents, who sobbed at news of the outcome.

Afterward, he said he hoped to “get back on the street and do what I love to do: protect the people of Brooklyn.”

Mr. Miller, the juror, said prosecutors never answered critical questions, like why there was no blood on the jeans Mr. Mineo was wearing during the confrontation. The jury asked the judge to play surveillance video from the day of the arrest in court. Though Mr. Mineo and another witness had testified that he had blood on his hand, jurors saw him place his hands in his pockets in the video and they asked to examine the jeans on their own. They found no blood in the pockets or the seat, Mr. Miller said. The jurors, Mr. Miller said, were also troubled by a hole in Mr. Mineo’s boxers: He said it was caused by the baton, but expert witnesses presented by the defense said that was impossible.

The prosecutors, Mr. Miller said, “were never able to answer how the hole was made.”

As soon as Mr. Mineo’s allegations emerged in 2008, they drew comparisons with the 1997 torture of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a broomstick by a police officer in Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct station house. The Louima attack became a national symbol of police brutality and racism, and the main officer involved was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

But while Mr. Louima’s injuries, including punctured internal organs and missing teeth, strongly suggested an attack, Mr. Mineo’s medical condition was more murky: His lawyers said he had developed an abscess, but they initially refused to release his medical records.

And while the attack on Mr. Louima by a white officer stirred longstanding complaints about the treatment of black men by the police, there was no racial component to Mr. Mineo’s case, since both he and the officers involved were white and Hispanic. It spawned neither major civil rights protests nor sweeping change to training or operations within the ranks. As the trial got under way in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn last month, there were neither protests outside the courthouse to support Mr. Mineo nor a sea of blue uniforms inside to support the officers.

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Officer Richard Kern, center, facing the camera, and Officer Alex Cruz, who had been charged with a cover-up of police abuse.Credit
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Throughout, the defense made diminishing Mr. Mineo’s credibility a priority, telling jurors about his drug use, previous arrests and the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the city, seeking about $350 million in damages. (Mr. Louima won about $8 million in settlements).

With conflicting expert testimony on the physical evidence and medical records, jurors were left to sort through the recollections of witnesses, including two of the officers on trial and Kevin Maloney, a transit officer who happened to be at the Prospect Park station when Mr. Mineo burst inside.

During two hours on the witness stand, Officer Maloney said he had come forward to quiet false allegations that Officer Cruz had sodomized Mr. Mineo. He said he saw Officer Kern press his baton into Mr. Mineo’s buttocks, but also that he did not think it amounted to abuse.

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Mr. Mineo’s own testimony provided the trial’s other highlight and its most colorful moments. On the witness stand, his straightforward, anguished account of abuse gave way to defiance as defense lawyers asked him about his lifestyle, his gang affiliation and even whether he paid taxes.

The jury’s forewoman, Jamie Dove, said: “He was animated. I didn’t judge him based on that or his past. It was just the evidence.”

During occasionally tense deliberations, one juror, a young woman, told the group that Officer Kern had been convicted of police brutality twice before, and was met with “shocked silence,” Mr. Miller said. She was replaced by an alternate juror on Friday. (Officer Kern was cleared in two cases of excessive force by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, but one of those cases, in 2007, led to two lawsuits the city settled for $50,000.)

Mr. Mineo was not in court for the verdict, but joined his lawyer to talk to reporters afterward in the hallway. As they spoke, the officers and their families exited the courtroom. Everyone exchanged glares, and then Mr. Mineo uttered a homophobic slur.

Prosecutors in the case left the courthouse without commenting. Later, when asked about it at an unrelated news conference, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said, “I never look beyond the jury’s verdict, and I never speculate.”

An earlier version of the Web summary of this article mistakenly suggested that the assault of Mr. Mineo took place on Friday.

A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2010, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: All Officers Are Acquitted in Police Abuse Trial. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe